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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29140893">come and take my soul</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/aestrales/pseuds/aestrales'>aestrales</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Julie and The Phantoms (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(most of this is based on my own experiences oops), (what are gay tv characters if not vessels for our trauma), M/M, mom friend bobby also features, please read the warnings, writing in a consistent tense is for cowards</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:55:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,254</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29140893</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/aestrales/pseuds/aestrales</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>tw: religious ocd, eating disorders, panic attacks</p>
<p> </p>
<p>title from Die Easy by Rag'n'Bone Man</p>
<p>"Might as well come and take my soul<br/>'Cause I can't take it to the promised land<br/>Well, well, well,<br/>So I can die easy<br/>Devil's gonna make up my dyin' bed"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>come and take my soul</h2></a>
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    <p>Before every single meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, even snacks, they’re supposed to say grace. Thank God for his providence, for sustaining and keeping them. <em>Our father, who art in heaven,<em> et cetera. Alex could say it in his sleep, probably does sometimes when he wakes up to Luke smacking him in the face with a pillow on sleepovers, telling him to stop sleeptalking. <em>And who would like to say grace?<em> his mother asks, <em>Alex, how about you?<em></em></em></em></em></em></em></p>
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<p>And he does. <em>Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this meal and for our time together. Protect and keep our friends and family and bless us all.<em> Fragments of every grace he’s ever heard his parents give, reordered like fridge magnet poetry.</em></em></p>
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<p>And alone in his room, he prays for his friends in earnest. He prays that Luke’s mom will come to understand him, so that he stops turning up to band practice with red puffy eyes. He prays that Reggie’s parents will stop fighting. He prays for every test Bobby has to take and every new song Luke tries to master on his guitar. He prays that God will look after them all, and it doesn’t work.</p>
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<p>He starts highlighting passages in Job. He never doubted God for so much as a second, and neither can Alex. God let the devil test him, take away everything Job had, and Job didn’t falter so he can’t either.</p>
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<p>He forgets to pray before he takes a brownie from Bobby’s mom- she’s really into baking, so his house is perfect for them to hang out in. He panics. And a very large part of him is completely aware that this is a ridiculous thing to be having a crisis over. But that vocal minority of anxiety always wins out over reason. He puts the brownie back onto the plate. He excuses himself, saying he left his hoodie in the living room. He has a panic attack, and doesn’t tell Reggie why when he walks in on Alex taking desperate, ragged breaths.</p>
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<p>At some point he gets too embarrassed to pray in the cafeteria. He used to press his hands together, eyes closed, mouthing the words, <em>Heavenly Father Make Us Truly Grateful<em>, but he started to realise that Reggie, Bobby and Luke always looked at him funny when he did it. Or at least, he was convinced they did. But he can’t just eat unblessed food. So he doesn’t eat. It’s a simple solution, really. And he makes up for it in the evening, he just has a second helping of dinner. So really, it’s fine.</em></em></p>
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<p>But his prayers still aren’t getting answered. Between shouting matches with his mom and endless band rehearsals, Luke loses his voice for a week. Reggie’s parents are arguing just as much as ever and Bobby’s trying to hold them all together by a thread. Alex does his homework sloppily at the lunch table- not eating in school has its advantages, he supposes- and drums until the sun sets.</p>
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<p>His mother plays worship music in the kitchen constantly. Alex sometimes sits by the stereo and hopes that the voices of the singers, so reverent and worshipful, will somehow bleed into him and he’ll start feeling holy again. He sits in church and prays, <em>please God please, I can’t keep going on like this, please take it back, I really can’t do this. They’re all going to hate me.<em></em></em></p>
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<p>And it doesn’t change. His crush on Luke doesn’t fade, and he wants to scream. He just drums instead. It becomes a kind of prayer itself to him, a ritual of devotion and faith. He’s got faith in his drums. Maybe more than in anything else in the world.</p>
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<p>He’s trying to make himself throw up, and it isn’t working. He’s just coughing and retching. Instinct makes him drag his fingers back up too quickly, and he collapses back against the door of the boys’ bathroom. Bobby made him eat something, <em>seriously Alex, you look like you’re gonna pass out,<em> and now he was trying to get it back out of him before it was too late, he hadn’t prayed before he swallowed, and he would be punished, and he'd deserve it.</em></em></p>
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<p>He felt- or imagined- the sensation of food settling like a stone in his stomach. It occurred to him that he was already unclean, already beyond help. No amount of blessings or prayers could fix him. He could eat all the blessed food he could stomach, he could ask God to make him <em>truly grateful<em> as many times as he wanted but it wouldn’t work. He stopped taking second helpings at dinner. He feels fractionally dizzier throughout the school day, but it isn’t like he’s a star student these days anyway.</em></em></p>
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<p>He isn’t sure what snaps or when. He starts pulling away, ever so slowly and tentatively, from everything he’s defined himself by for- for forever. Sunset Curve is booking gigs, they’re making strides, and Alex is getting noticed. People think he’s good. That he’s talented. And his friends have always said that about him, but that nasty, loud part of him always thought they were just being nice so they didn’t have to find another drummer.</p>
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<p>These people are a hundred percent sincere, though. They couldn’t care less about how many times in a day Alex prayed, or how much he ate, or about his year-long crush on Luke which had finally faded into obscurity. He mattered to them just because he was the really good drummer of a really good band, and they were going places.</p>
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<p>It’s not that Alex actually believes that it’s his fault. They were eating gross street food and they got food poisoning and died. It has nothing to do with his stupid irrational fears. He’s not a kid anymore, he could eat three meals a day and not bless a single one of them.</p>
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  <em>But God is faithful; He will not suffer you to be tempted beyond that which ye are able to bear.<em></em></em>
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<p>He cries. For twenty-five years, it turns out. It doesn’t feel like it. Then he gets a hold of himself again, eventually. He’s caught up in a whirlwind of <em>oh-god-we’re-ghosts-what-the-hell<em>, gets knocked off his feet, literally, and <em>uh oh<em>.</em></em></em></em></p>
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<p>Except that it’s not. Because the only people that can see him are the people that always had his back, or always will. His parents are a distant memory, his life before, that was over before it started, disintegrated. And he’s always been terrified of change, but it comes with the territory of being a literal ghost and he finds it doesn’t terrify him as much anymore. Change brought him Julie, Willie, and a second chance. Change brought him home.</p>
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<p>So maybe, when he’s reunited with Willie in a maelstrom of confusion and <em>love<em>, more love than he ever thought it was possible to give or to receive, he realises he’s found his own voice. It’s quiet, still and small. It’s not overpowering the anxious yell that drove him for so long, not quite, but it’s his. It says what he feels, what he means.</em></em></p>
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<p>It’s the voice with which he says <em>I love you<em>, and means it a thousand times over, a new kind of prayer. <em>I love you and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be yours. I’ve tried to have faith in so many different things but I have faith in you, and I always will, and I love you, Willie, I love you, I love you now and forever.<em></em></em></em></em></p>
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